President Donald Trump this week shocked the international community when he said he flipped his position on the war in Ukraine and said he thinks Kyiv could re-take all of its occupied land seized by Russia.
In a Tuesday comment on social media, he said, “I think Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and win all of Ukraine back in its original form.”
“With time, patience, and the financial support of Europe and, in particular, NATO, the original borders from where this war started, is very much an option,” he added. “Why not?”
This position is a stark reversal from where he stood when he first re-entered office and, in an infamous February Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, told him he “[didn’t] have the cards” to take on Russia, and repeatedly suggested Kyiv would need to make significant concessions to end the war.
A serviceman of 24th Mechanized brigade named after King Danylo of the Ukrainian Armed Forces fires a 2s5 “Hyacinth-s” self-propelled howitzer towards Russian troops at a front line, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, near the town of Chasiv Yar in Donetsk region, Ukraine Nov. 18, 2024. (Oleg Petrasiuk/Press Service of the 24th King Danylo Separate Mechanized Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces/Handout via REUTERS )
“The only obstacle would be our fear — our inability to defend the rules of the world that we live in,” she said. “The recent series of incidents, both drone related in Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, and also related to the incursion into our air space by Russian fighter jets, demonstrate again and again that Russia is coloring outside the lines.
“It’s going to continue [and] it’s going to escalate, because they feel that they are unpunishable, because they feel that they are untouchable, and that means that they are happily challenging NATO as well,” Sakaliene said.
All three security experts agreed that the U.S.’s role in countering Putin is “critical” and the argument that the U.S. should take a backseat to Europe weakens the united front necessary to stop Russia.
“The current world security architecture is built around the axis of the United States,” Sakaliene said, arguing that the system shouldn’t be exploited, but supported by Europe’s bolstering of its own military capabilities. “But that also means that the voice of the United States was and is still vital for certain decisions related to a security of a democratic world.”
“And that the United States’ voice is the one that Russia hears the loudest,” she said.
Trump on Tuesday suggested Ukraine should not only retake the land seized by Russia, but “maybe even go further than that.”
Sak pushed back on this and said Ukraine is viewing the situation through a “realistic” lens.
“We’ve never had the ambition to conquer Russian territory. We don’t need it,” Sak said. “We just want them out of our land.
“We understand that at this stage, even this objective is not possible to achieve through military means,” he continued. “It will have to be a mixture of diplomatic means, and it probably will take a long time.”
Ultimately, Ukraine viewed Trump’s comments not as a signal that the U.S. is going to take immediate action, but rather as a “confirmation” that Trump is now fully on board with backing Ukraine, and aligning itself with the NATO alliance.
Infographic with a map of Ukraine locating territories claimed by Russia (Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Crimea, which was annexed in 2014), as well as Russian territorial advances, according to data from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) and AEI’s Critical Threats Project, as of Aug. 17, 2025. (Guillermo Rivas Pacheco,Jean-Michel Cornu/AFP via Getty Images)
“Standing shoulder to shoulder with the European partners of Ukraine…this alone represents a big threat to Russia,” Sak argued. “They know it, and this, once again, sends them a message that this is an unwinnable war for them.
“Sooner or later, when we cripple their economy in a combination of sanctions plus the deep strike drones that we carry out on a daily basis, Russia will be in a position that, despite their willingness to fight this war and continue to cause these crimes of aggression, it will not just be able to do so purely for economic reasons,” Sak added.
